The Stupidity Of Debating The Existence of God

Look, I love debates. They are fun, exciting, entertaining and if they are done in a correct and in a deep manner, they always leave you with something to think about. In a debate there's no winners, well, that's actually not true, there's no official winners, you're the one who must decide who the true winner is at the end on the day, based on the arguments presented by each of the opponents and how well they defended them and formulated them.

So, debates exist because they allow us to examine challenging questions looking at both sides of the coin.  They expose us to all the arguments and counter-arguments regarding that question and at the end of the day you are the one who decides what's the triumphant argument or what is the triumphant point of view regarding that challenging question and the  current status in which that question is viewed or perceived.

In seems like something ethereal.

Now bearing that in mind, is easy to assume that if we try to apply this phenomenal activity, this beautiful exercise into one of the most challenging questions ever imagined by philosophy or theology (that been the existence of God) We are going to witness  the greatest exercise of human intellect and expression in history.



But the funny thing is that the answer is a complete NO!

The act of debating the existence of God is one of the most fruitless, repetitive, time-consuming and  non-progressive things ever imagined. If you are ever entangled in a debate about the existence of God, I don't care if you're a theist, an atheist, an agnostic, a pantheist, an ignostic, whatever. Get the hell out of there, because let me tell you, that discussion is going to lead you nowhere and I will give you my reasons.

The reason why almost all the debates discussing the existence of God fail (and I'm not only talking about those mundane arguments that you get yourself into with your friends, relatives or so, I'm also talking about professional debates with academics, audience members and everything.) is because the debaters almost never define what the hell are they discussing about, they never defined what God is in the context of this particular debate. As I expressed before, "God" is a term that could express a myriad of completely different things. The term "God" is an ocean that englobes any kind of deep meanings in which a person could relate to or appreciate. God could be the beauty that you perceive in nature, God could be the essence and the rules in which we discover how this universe works, God could be your inner self that is always demanding you to transcend, God could be this world when this world favours you, God could be the love or the strong emotions that you feel for someone else.

Now, you realize how many meanings that word could carry and if you're going to get yourself into a debate about this vague term, the first thing that you must do is to define what are you discussing about specifically , the first thing that you must do is to define God in the most specific way possible, if you're not able to do this then this debate will be completely meaningless and a waste of time.

Don't believe me? Take a look at this debate.



I know, the debate is too long, and the most probable thing is that you're not going to be able to watch the whole thing. When you have the time watch it, to make a long story short Hitchens basically wipes the floor with these dudes single-handed. Nevertheless is a really bad and poor debate, because nothing is clearly defined, nothing is clearly defined by the apologists, nothing is clearly defined by the moderator (which in my humble point of view is the worst moderator in the history of debates) and nothing is clearly defined by Hitchens (although he sometimes try).

And by this, you get a debate that goes nowhere, debaters that don't move forward and that keep spinning around in the same arguments and counter-arguments that they already established.

If you look deeply the debate doesn't move forward because of how these apologists portray the Christian God. After watching this debate and making a few observations, I realized that must of people are actually wrong when they assume that religion never changes, religion chances to and their Gods chance with them. By this I've realized that the Christian God has truly evolve.

The concept of God that these apologists are defending is vague also, but for what I saw I can say that their views of the Christian God are formulated by the combination of 4 key distinct aspects:

1.- The God of Jesus Christ (every time they say "Yeah, but Jesus Christ said... ").

2.- The Cosmological God ( every time they pull out the "fine tuning" card or when they say "but look how everything is in order in our universe... ")

3.- The Hardcore God of the Old Testament ( Yahweh, this is a dangerous card but they only use it when it seems convenient, generally saying "Yeah, but in Genesis says..." ignoring pretty much everything else that this God did. They know this is a dangerous move and they don't use this card very often anymore.

4.- The Personal God  (every time they say "Yeah, but it doesn't matter what you say, ever since I started to believe in God I have found my purpose and I've been living in happiness everyday of my life" etc, etc.)

They start with the God of Jesus, when Hitchens refutes that, they go with the Cosmological God, when Hitches refutes that they go with the Personal God, when Hitchens refutes that, they go with the Old Testament God, when Hitchens destroys that, they go back to the Cosmological God once again. Hitchens is trapped in a debate that he will never absolutely win because the concept of God is not clearly defined and these apologists keep bringing different concepts into the table. He is in reality debating about 4 different Gods (which are not really that bound to each other, except the God of Jesus and the God of the Old Testament) and if one of those is true, all of them are true to.

That is what happened here and that is what will happen in pretty much every debate like this.

And even if you're able to endure a debate like this, at the end of the day is that pretty much nothing will change, the christian will still be a christian (almost all christians that engage into debates are strong christians that will not change their beliefs) the theist will still a theist (maybe he chances a little bit his perception of God but he will still a theist) and the atheist will still be an atheist  (almost all atheist that engage into debates are strong atheist that will not change their lack of beliefs).

Note: I'm not saying that we should never debate about religion, if the subject is focused on religion and religious values in society, then go for it, there's a lot of substance and a lot of stuff to talk about. But if the whole debate is only focused on proving or disproving the existence of God, then everything becomes meaningless, a waste of energy and a waste of time.